God, Science, Morality and You

As a cabinet and furniture maker I meet with clients. One of the many things that we talk about when agreeing on a design is Color. There are several ways that we look at color in regards to the piece or pieces we are designing. Sometimes the client brings in some fabric they would like to try and match from their couch. Other times we are looking at a color wheel from a local paint store. However the most difficult time is had when the client doesn’t quite know what color they want but they will “know it when they see it”. Some of you are smiling because I am talking about YOU! And you drive people like me crazy! No fault of your own. Everyone does this, just with different things. For some people its shoes. Other people cars etc. Some people do it when they are looking for a house to buy.

Back to color selection. Before I continue to apply a finish to the piece I have built, I provide a color sample to the client for final approval. This accomplishes several goals. First, it gives the client a physical, in hand look at what the piece will look like. Its sheen, texture etc. Most importantly for me, it gives an unchanging standard. Lets say the client wanted a very specific Teal Green Semitransparent stain. Sounds cool I know. I would then deliver a sample of exactly what would be used on their new retro coffee table. The day arrives when I deliver their ultra-sleek three legged table to their home and the client says “That isn’t what I had in mind, its the wrong color green” Aha! “No problem” I say, “Lets look at the sample you approved and see if it matches.” At this point we take out the unchanging standard. The sample they approved. I lay it down on the table and see that it indeed does match.

Friends, oddly enough, people treat Truth and Morality the same way they treat paint colors. Lets say that instead of paint colors we were discussing wether Murder was right or wrong. I will let you be the “good” guy or gal and say that during our discussion you said that Murder was wrong. I replied and said no, Murder is most certainly NOT wrong. You see without a standard outside our selves, like the color sample, how would we be able to know for sure if Murder was in fact wrong?

You may say, well, society says its wrong, I don’t need a God to tell me its wrong. This may seem like a logical point living in America, but what about when the majority says that Murder is right. Nazi Germany declared murdering 6 million Jews was a good thing because it cleaned the human race of an inferior people group. Adolf Hitler obtained his morality from Darwinian Evolution. In their minds, they were merely catalyzing natural selection. Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong killed upwards of 60 million people under the same banner. These acts are universally recognized as being evil, wrong, sickening. Yet by what standard can we call these acts evil?

With no Moral Law Giver, there can be no moral law, for it would just be your opinion against my opinion. We would essentially be arguing over a paint color with no standard to compare it to. Mother Teresa being “Good” and Hitler being “Bad” doesn’t mean a thing without an unchanging standard to differentiate the two.

I will leave you with a quote form C.S. Lewis who summed it up better than I ever could.

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

I believe part of the reason why people hold on to the idea of God is because it is the only thing that keeps them alive. Not all people have the same strength and courage as you. Not everyone is as strong as you. Sometimes, God is the only reason why people are holding on to living on Earth. It keeps their faith strong and even if people often criticize them for believing in an entity that they cannot see or touch, they believe that He exists because of His mysterious ways.